Cox Business is extending its growing cloud capabilities through a partnership with colocation provider ViaWest, offering a suite of fiber-based connectivity with colocation and cloud solutions to customers in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California.
ViaWest has been aggressively expanding its data center presence. In addition to rolling out a 110,000 square foot data center in Las Vegas, it plans to complete a 90,000 square foot multi-tenant data center facility in Phoenix early next year with Cox Business as its anchor tenant.
While this agreement with ViaWest is new, providing cloud services is nothing new for Cox Business.
Already, the cable MSO offers two service sets: cloud-based IP Centrex for businesses and PayLeap, a cloud-based merchant and card processing service that it says integrates in-store, online and mobile payment processing into one managed service.
The cable MSO's move with ViaWest comes as it holds its place as the fifth largest Ethernet service provider in the U.S., according to Vertical Systems Group's mid-year Ethernet Leaderboard.
Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group, said that the "cable MSO segment as a whole had more new ports installed in the first half of year than the incumbents did."
Cable's stake in the Ethernet market may be much smaller than the incumbents', but for MSOs like Cox, establishing colocation relationships with providers like ViaWest allows it to get more cloud services to existing customers quickly.
Unlike fellow cable MSO Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), which took an acquisition path by purchasing NaviSite, Cox Business has chosen to establish relationships with other center providers, including i/o and Phoenix NAP, which allow it to immediately extend cloud services to its well-established metro Ethernet service customer base.
For more:
- see the release
Special report: Charting the Ethernet ecosystem
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